Social Impact Heroes Helping Our Planet: Why & How Scott Mackey Of Love is not the Answer Is Helping To Change Our World
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Perseverance and resilience are the #1 life skills: Failure and disappointment in life are inevitable. Knowing these things allows us to keep going as things get hard, always learning and always growing.
As a part of my series about “Individuals and Organizations Making an Important Social Impact,” I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Mackey.
Scott Mackey is a former politico and green tech startup guy now plying his trade as a writer and community builder. His forthcoming novel, Love is Not the Answer, imagines that a national movement to bring love into politics threatens the status quo, leading both political parties, corporate interests, and the nation’s largest megachurch to declare a war on love.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?
I grew up a misfit in rural East Texas. My family were biblical literalists and former missionaries with a strict moral code who took Jesus’ command to serve the “least of these” literally. Our community was a traditional bible belt town where Christianity was both all-encompassing and very loosely interpreted. I was the kid who told on everyone else for “being bad” and got straight A grades because I got a spanking at home if I didn’t.
I was also miserable, depressed, and low-key self-harming by the age of eight, the result of being an innate non-conformist forced into my family’s narrow definition of how a person could behave, talk, think, and act.
I didn’t really get past the depression until I left home for college. Once I finally grew past the right-wing Jesus-meets-Republican-politics perspective of my youth, I quickly found myself not just enamored with Barack Obama but working for his 2008 presidential campaign.
The above is a very quick version of a long story, but it’s great food for thought!
You’ve written a social impact book that is making a difference for our planet. Can you tell us a bit about what you and your book are trying to change in our world today?
Love is Not the Answer is a humorous allegory written to provide clarity, hope, and inspiration for Americans during what promises to be an ugly, uninspiring 2024 presidential election. The novel is zany, a bit insane, and incredibly fun, but once one gets past the colorful characters and fast-paced plot, it’s clear I am writing about two primary themes.
First, I strongly believe there is a single crisis sitting beneath what we like to call our political, social, environmental, economic, or mental health crises. The crisis at the root of all other crises is a spiritual crisis. By spiritual, I don’t mean religious, and I don’t refer to any particular religion or sect’s notion of who or what God is. Rather, I’m referring to spirituality as the life of the soul, emotion, and feeling, the piece and the part of every person that most mystical traditions call some version of “the silent voice within.”
Our spiritual crisis results from a society and a lifestyle that preaches separation through both words and actions. We, the American people, are separated from ourselves and obsessed with screens, devices, and other forms of distraction, leading to horrifying levels of depression, anxiety, and suicide; we are separated from each other, leaving people lonely and at the mercy of political and economic systems built to extract value from people’s lives; we are separated from the earth, severing our energetic connection to the natural world we evolved to co-exist within, and leading to us seeing “nature” as little but a resource to be exploited; and we are separated from God…And again, I don’t mean God in the sense of a specific “God,” rather I mean “God” as the energetic, creative force sitting beneath all creation, the logic of DNA and the cosmos, the feeling we have when standing atop a mountain or next to a stream; the power found when staring into your lover or a stranger’s eyes.
We are a nation separated, and I’m not optimistic we can or will solve any of our pressing challenges until we begin taking the steps necessary to live from a place of intentional connection.
The second issue I focus on in the book is less dramatic. It is systemic, simple, and straightforward. The political and economic systems in the United States are calcified, corrupt, and desperately in need of reform. Our systems work to maintain and expand the profit and power of those who sit at the top of our systems. We need systems that work to benefit, empower, and unite American citizens.
While changing our systems may feel impossible, I actually think systemic change could be simple, but it will never happen until our elected officials and candidates hear from you, the American voter, that electoral and campaign finance reform is a priority.
I don’t think anyone could laugh their way through my novel and not, in the end, believe they have a responsibility to demand reform from elected officials who put their interests above those they are elected to serve.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
I was a mess, and then I learned I could heal. I lost the small, shame-giving, judgmental Christian God and then found the limitless, empowering, unconditional-love-gifting God of all. I worked in politics, I lost faith in politics, and then I was reminded that to build systems that work, I had to take responsibility to be part of creating alternatives. I worked in business and saw that businesses need rules to follow. I’ve been reminded that if society is to co-exist with our amoral profit-driving engines, we have to take responsibility for creating rules that channel business genius into lanes that work for us all.
In other words, my life prepared me to write this exact story at this exact moment.
Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions but never manifest them. They don’t get up and just do it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and do it? What was that final trigger?
In 2020, I — while completely sober, I might add — was in the midst of a breath and dance-derived trance. I remember being in a genuine place of surrender that night. I was blasted wide open, sitting in the bliss of touching the center of “self” and asking big questions.
I asked the universe “who” and “what” I was supposed to be in this next chapter of my life.
The response was immediate: “What do you mean ‘be?’ Who are YOU?”
The moment stunned me. I immediately realized I’d spent my entire life desperately trying to be, or not to be, so many different things, but I’d never stopped to figure out, or even to ask, who exactly I was.
That night, I got on Amazon and searched for books that might help. I ended up buying a book called The Great Work of Your Life. This book is a guide for Dharmic inquiry, and as I got into the book, it quickly became clear that I was supposed to write my own book…which was a surprise, given I’d never written a book and had always considered myself a poor writer.
It wasn’t until I had written an entire first draft of Love is Not the Answer that I not only came to believe I could do it, but I realized that more than writing a novel, I was also sketching a new vision of the future.
Many people don’t know the steps to write a book designed to create social change. What are some of the things you took to get your project started?
The biggest challenge when writing a book is surrendering to the writing process. You may know the themes you want to explore, you may have a great sense of the characters, and you might even be confident you will be able to write the book, but actually sitting down to write and maintaining your resolve and confidence once you realize that “writing” a book actually means re-writing every word, sentence, and paragraph a thousand times is a daunting challenge.
Once you’ve settled into the writing, the next big challenge is to “release the fruits,” as the Bhagavad Gita puts it. If you are writing for social change, you seek to channel and embody a message far bigger than yourself. You are seeking to tell a story that captures millions of people’s hopes, needs, and desires. To do this, you cannot be writing for personal gain, and you cannot be writing from a place of need or fear. You must be engrossed in the work, and you must understand the work has value whether the book is “successful” or not. Equally, you must know that your value is not connected to the book’s “success.”
Once you have released the fruits, you can write from a place of humble service, allowing your story and purpose to flow through you for the sake of all you hope to lead and inspire.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began to do the work of releasing your book?
I set out to write a novel. To tell a story. The story had a purpose, but more than that purpose, I simply felt called to write.
However, once I finished writing, it became apparent that I was not just writing a book. Rather, I was imagining how the world could be, in the process, creating a roadmap for my future.
So, while I have written a book (it’s out February 6th!), I have also called myself into the process of embodying the book’s message. My purpose at this moment is not just to sell a book. It is to do the work of communicating, leading, and organizing people to accept responsibility for becoming and creating the version of ourselves and the version of our country we wish we could be but so often are certain we have not yet become.
As this became clear, I started meeting person after person who was aligned in the work. People who are already deep in the process and who are becoming my teachers and collaborators in the effort to imagine and create a new way of being and existing.
It has been said that sometimes, our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story about a humorous mistake you made when you first started and the lesson you learned from that?
Well, I’m not sure this is all that humorous, but when I first felt called to write a book, I set out to do so with equal parts trepidation and enthusiasm. Eighteen months into that process, I had written 400 pages of what I quickly realized was not a novel but was 100,000 words of practice.
So, I mothballed that first novel, chalking it up to practice and preparation, and entered into a several month-long listening period that resulted in my being given the story that has become Love is Not the Answer. Because I’d been through the highs — and mostly lows — of my first attempt at a novel, I was ready actually to write and complete this book.
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
Belief is a powerful force. When we believe, our subconscious mind accepts that belief as “fact,” aligning our feelings and energy in a process that then drives us to turn that belief into the felt physical reality of life. But, belief is hard, especially when doubt is so easy, and so many of the stories we feed ourselves tell us that our value and ability to do or create is based on what we have, or have not, accomplished in the past.
My story of help is about my fiance Audrey, numerous friends and family members, and several mentors, who all when I told them I was going to write a book that mattered despite the fact I had never before done so, told me: “Great, you can do it, we have your back.”
These people encouraged me to start. They told me to keep going even after I decided my first 18 months and 400 pages were just “practice,” and they have cheered me as I have completed and am now launching this book.
Are there three things the community, society, or politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Of course!
1) Belief: We can all believe we are capable of more. If we accept the world as it is, our fears and pessimism become prophetic. But if we believe we are capable of more, imagine the world as we wish it existed, and organize our personal lives and community around our vision of the future, then we will create it. As we enter what many feel will be a very dark, hopeless, and vindictive 2024 political season, believing there are alternatives we can create is vital.
2) Electoral Reform: Part of the reason our politics feels so broken is that our political systems are broken. To change outcomes in our country, we need systems that incentivize better behavior from our politicians and limit the corrupting influence of people, organizations, and companies who have successfully warped our political systems to work on behalf of the already powerful at the expense of us all. So, while a mass movement calling people into a higher version of themselves is magical, we also need to focus on systemic reform. This means 1) demanding we reform federal elections to create space for independent voices through some combination of open primaries, proportional representation, and term limits and 2) passing a constitutional amendment that regulates all political donations so we can remove the corrupting influence of unlimited, often anonymous money from our political process.
3) You are the Beloved: Not to get all woo-woo-y on you, but so many of our country’s issues stem from the fact that people in America are hurting and are living from a place of fear and pain. We cannot have grace for ourselves or our neighbors if we do not know with complete, absolute, felt certainty that our value as a person is innate, that we are worthy of unconditional love, and that we have access to that love at all times, regardless of how we feel or how we’re performing at work or what our spouse or children or friends think of us. Yet, we live in a world that tells us our value is based on what other people think, how much money we earn if we get enough clicks, or if our job title is good enough. When we outsource our value to anything outside of the timelessness of self, we are outsourcing our power, making ourselves helpless. The result is a people and a society who are hurting and see no other solution to their pain than to fight or surrender. We see this reflected in suicide rates, our mental health epidemic, the angry, disrespectful tone of our politics, the now routine occurrence of mass shootings, and the fact that our solution when facing these crises is to look for scapegoats, scapegoats we so often find in conspiracy theories or in blaming each other. So, if we wish to change our world, we must first come to know that we are beloved, that we all, in the depth of who we are, are worthy of the divine’s unconditional, everpresent, life-changing love.
How would you articulate how a business can become more profitable by being more sustainable and environmentally conscious? Can you share a story or example?
I’m going to sound a bit cynical here, but c’est la vie.
Businesses making more or better money by being sustainable is a question of marketing and market demand.
A business’s job is to make money, and being more sustainable does not help them make money unless their customers value such behavior. If their customers or potential customers do value responsible, life-affirming, earth protecting business practices, then a business can not only choose to manufacture products or access resources in a responsible way, but they can build their brand and their marketing around those values. So, a business being more profitable because of sustainability depends on consumers demanding and valuing such behavior.
This also gets to the heart of regulation. Politics and governmental rules are little more than a reflection of society’s values and expectations. If a society chooses to prioritize clean water, food grown without poisonous pesticides, and resources acquired without harming people or the planet, then that society will pass laws requiring such behavior from businesses. At this point, sustainable and environmentally conscious behavior stops being a choice and becomes table stakes for creating products or services for a society that prioritizes a healthy approach to co-existing with our environment.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?
- Perseverance and resilience are the #1 life skills: Failure and disappointment in life are inevitable. Knowing these things allows us to keep going as things get hard, always learning and always growing.
- Life isn’t fair, and it never will be. Because life isn’t fair, we have to take responsibility for how we shape our lives. If we allow the unfairness of life to become the obstacle we can’t overcome, then we will remain stuck in the situation and the life experience that our family and our life circumstances set for us.
- Happiness is a byproduct of living with purpose and out of service: Don’t try to figure out how to be happy; try to figure out what type of service brings you satisfaction and then build your life around fulfilling that service. If you do this, you will be one of the happiest people on earth.
- No person does anything irrational: No person has ever done an irrational thing. If your boss calls and you feel yourself panicking even though you know you’re ok, that isn’t irrational. If your friend cancels on you and you find yourself furious at them even though you know it’s okay that they chose to do something else, that isn’t irrational. If you yell at your spouse even though you don’t want to be someone who yells at the person you love the most, that isn’t irrational. These are all examples of old emotional patterns overriding the logic of your conscious mind. Anytime we do something that feels “irrational,” it’s a sign there is a root-cause wound or belief sitting somewhere within us…if you do the work to heal the root cause, you free yourself in the process.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider positively impacting our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
I tell young people to be themselves. But I don’t say “be yourself” in the way a slogan might appear on a bumper sticker.
Being yourself is a soul-work process that takes a lifetime to complete. Being yourself means learning how to be silent so you can begin to differentiate outside stories and beliefs that reveal themselves as voices in your head from the piece of you that is you, the piece of self that sits behind the voices, hearing them and choosing whether or not to believe them.
Being yourself means realizing that your value is innate and has nothing to do with being right or wrong, smart or dumb, rich or poor, successful or a failure.
Being you means accepting the inherent uncertainty of life; accepting the fact that learning to be you in the incredibly complex, often contradictory reality of life is a complicated process that is anything but linear; accepting that a life lived excellently can be judged by nothing except how well you came to know yourself, and how well you have learned to live in integrity with your most deeply felt truths, values, and principles.
Finally, I would tell young people that happiness is not the goal. Yes, you want, need, and desire to be happy, but will not “get happy” by pursuing happiness. Rather, you will find happiness and contentment by
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I’m not sure this is a life lesson quote, per se, but the following mantra from Thich Nhat Hanh was part of a process that forms the foundation of who I am.
Breathing in, I calm my body
Breathing out, I smile
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment
The mantra above is part of a wider body of knowledge intended to teach gratitude, presence, and mindfulness. For me, crippling anxiety during my sophomore year of college was largely resolved after spending months repeating this mantra to myself over and over. I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I was doing was rewiring both my conscious and subconscious mind to believe that I was ok, that the moment was all that I had, and that the future, which I could not control, was not to be worried about.
Knowing that I was in control was a powerful lesson, but being the slow learner that I am, it took me another decade to begin understanding just how powerful our minds and our beliefs are and the degree to which I, or any person, can choose to be in control of how they experience existence and consciously shape their lives.
Is there a person in the world or the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
At this exact moment, which is 6:52 a.m. on a Friday morning, the person I’d most love to have breakfast with is an author, activist, and earthkeeper named Starhawk. Starhawk wrote a book called The Fifth Sacred Thing that I adore, and she has committed her life to doing the work of building societal alternatives that give people a chance to opt into new ways of living, being, and knowing.
She’s an inspiration, I’d love to be her friend, and I’m sure I could learn many lifetimes worth of wisdom by spending time at her side.
How can our readers follow you online?
Find me on Instagram or TikTok: @scottmackeywriter
Or contact me through the book’s website: www.loveisnottheanswernovel.com
This was very meaningful; thank you so much. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
Social Impact Heroes Helping Our Planet: Why & How Scott Mackey Of Love is not the Answer Is… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.